A Brand New Ad-Venture
As many of you know, a job change can be scary or exciting. Amplify that excitement and that sense of fear and you have a career change. And that’s exactly what I am about to tackle, a wholesale career change into finance.
Coming out of a short sabbatical, the next several months will be an exciting time as I do what I truly love to do above all else in the professional world: learn.
I’m very proud to announce that I have been named an operating partner at the Austin-based Venture Capital firm Ecliptic Capital.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing the battle-tested founders of this start-up VC firm for several years. More on what a Venture Capital firm does here (short) and here (long).
Watching the Ecliptic Capital folks launch, grow, raise funds, and deploy capital to some notable startups (more on those later) only made my confidence in this total career change grow stronger and stronger over time.
For those of you that know me, this is a big shift. After 20 years in eCommerce product, digital strategy, and digital marketing I will now be working on the buy side of finance as a Venture Capitalist.
So why now?
During my sabbatical, I had time to sit down and explore a bunch of different opportunities that spoke to me. However, the ability as an operational VC to work with a wide variety of startups (not just SAAS) and share in their upsides spoke to me the loudest. In fact, it screamed at me and haunted my dreams for weeks.
When I graduated from Moody College at the University of Texas I never once thought I would work in finance. I loved coding early HTML, PHP, writing, editing video for TSTV, and asking hard questions to create stories.
Luckily, what makes me qualified for a job such as this are the same skills I learned during those college years — critical thinking, writing, developing strategy, doing user research, and asking tough questions about hard subjects.
Add to that my 20 years of experience in the fields I mentioned above, plus my work with clients of all sizes tackling problems with people, process, strategy, technology, data, and culture through organizational work. I’ll bring those same skills to every startup I work with.
Other things I’ll bring to the table of this job include the experience gained from being part of two large-scale startup acquisitions (Ant’s Eye View and Clearhead) and then working inside the beasts that bought them.
I’ve also co-founded and run two startups. One was an early “eCommerce tied to a social media” tech company called HelpAttack! and the other was an event-based company that ran complicated art events across five US cities (which we closed but now are in the process of selling!). I’ve experienced the pains and success of being an entrepreneur in vastly different markets and industries and look forward to sharing that.
So what will I be learning? As you can imagine, it’s a lot. Term sheets, exit strategies, negotiation strategies, startup valuation criteria (thanks to HustleFund for the head start!), board meetings of all types, adding and exiting employees, fundraising, finding and pitching LPs, which Patagonia vest to wear on which day, taking meetings like this, and forming my own investment thesis (more on that soon).
As a lifelong learner, that’s actually the part I am most looking forward to.
I will be under the mentorship of some fantastic folks, finding more mentors (like Mike and Rajiv), learning on the job, and reading about a dozen books on the topic. The idea of learning an entirely new world of finance, while learning from (and being pitched by) some of the most forward-looking and diverse startups in the world, is a dream journey that I start this week.
So can I ask for some help in my journey?
- If you have ever thought about investing in startups, reach out to me. Let’s talk. We can both learn.
- If you know of a great startup that is looking for early funding, reach out to me.
